Your article is about the Walrus magazine. I am not writing about the Walrus magazine. I just found the piece to be an interesting jumping off point for a thought experiment. So let’s begin.I think journalism is important. My first degree was in radio and television arts, which is like broadcast journalism without any facts. I am a media podcast junkie. So when I found an article that combined my media nerdism with my nonprofit nerdism, there was no way I could not write this post.

There is no such thing as a “nonprofit business model”

Nonprofit is just a corporate structure, like being a publicly-traded company versus a privately-traded company.

All charities are nonprofits. Not all nonprofits are charities. That’s a super important point that basically everyone, after learning that there is “government” and “business”, should also learn.Charities, by definition, operate in the public interest. A charity is incorporated for very specific purposes. Unlike businesses, which can switch their whole purpose whenever they want, a charity can only do what it was created to do. It must also abide by rules limiting political and partisan activities, fundraising activities, and commercial activities. Charities are supposed to be funded primarily by gifts, money and resources donated with no expectation or reward or return.

Nonprofits don’t earn a profit for shareholders or owners. They do not have to serve the public interest. They don’t have to do “good”, or even pretend to do “good”.

Let’s assume Kay’s suggesting that media outlets of the future will be charities. What would happen?

Chaos. Horror. Social collapse.

Sure, some media outlets can be charities. Absolutely there is room for that. But for the whole sector? That may be the worst idea of all for saving journalism.

Here’s why:

First, charities have to be approved by the government. I’m not sure about you, but I think that sounds antithetical to a functioning democracy. (Spectrum licensing and legitimate regulatory oversight aside.) You probably don’t want one level of government gatekeeping the entire journalism sector and deciding who gets to exist.

Second, charities are limited in the amount of political activity they can undertake. This is a good thing (in theory), because it keeps them independent. But it would be untenable for a media outlet. How can you cover political stories and affairs without being political? Without attempting to influence public or official opinions? Covering a story is a way of saying “this topic is important and deserves attention.” Ignoring a story says the opposite. Both could be construed as political. Throw in the fact that the government gets to decide what is “political,” and it’s hard to see how a sector built on charitable contributions could also be a diverse, provocative, accountability-making force.

Third, charities can’t engage in partisan activity at all. Unhappily, the federal government’s definition of partisan and political particularly when it comes to social media, is very narrow. Charities can’t link to the social media accounts of elected officials. They can’t share information disseminated by political parties, even with a caption like “this is the #1 trending topic on Twitter today.” Journalists who cover politics have to do those things to do their jobs.

Fourth, if the entire journalism sector were to rely on donations for survival, I’m not sure you’d have a more accountable media than you do today. A small group of people with wealth, and presumably influence, would decide who gets funded. By default, that also means they would decide who gets heard, what issues are aired, and what viewpoints are put forward. At best, journalists would work for a relatively small, relatively homogenous group of people. At worst, journalists would be under the thumb of a cabal of message-controlling, powerful, unaccountable, n’er-do-wells.

It’s probably a non-issue

I don’t think it will actually ever happen that journalism becomes a largely charity-driven sector. If you cover news that I want to consume, I’m going to pay you for it. Whether it’s crowd-funding, subscription, or pay-as-you-go, it’s going to happen (cabals be darned).

The ad-driven model that evolved over the decades was a response to the market failure that is inherent in journalism - the price of good journalism is probably higher than anyone is willing to pay. There’s virtually no demand to learn about issues we don’t even know exist until we’ve been told about them. Not all the news we need to know is news we want to know. So advertising was a way of funding the work, and it was good(ish) while it lasted.

The market failure was always there, but the old business model is failing. Charitable donations are one response. A handful of charitable news organizations could definitely exist and thrive, but only in the midst of other models. For the sake of democracy.

A relative shared this image over the holidays, and I just love the quote.

Nonprofit organizations will always exist.

Individuals will always find reasons to organize themselves, permanently or temporarily, to do things for no reason other than they think it’s the right thing to do. There will always be market failures that mean people won’t pay for benefits they can get for free or that people won’t pay for benefits that go to somebody else. There will always be services and needs that government can’t or won’t provide.

The volunteer-led organizations in any culture tell you so much about what people truly value, seek, and need.

In the for-profit world, people raise funding (or take out a big loan), build their thing, sell their thing, and eventually make money (or fail).

In the charity world, there is no seed funding and no hope of future profit, so you raise a little, do a little, raise a little, do a little, raise a little, do a little, and wash rinse repeat that for the rest of your life.

Start-ups may bootstrap, but only because they expect to turn a profit some day. Charities basically bootstrap in perpetuity, and they do it seeking to solve the most complex problems of our time.

Having been in the charity sector my whole adult life, the notion of starting a project with even a decent fraction of the capital you need to build and launch it, is mind-blowingly foreign.

First, Nell, I don’t know you, but I read your blog because I value the work you do and the time you spend thinking about our shared sector. So in the nature of respectful, and good-natured debate, here’s my blunt reaction to your latest blog (The Fundraising Event Debate Rages On).

Note: I changed the title after someone beside me suggested it that "Nell Edgington (Social Velocity) is wrong about more than just charity events. Here’s why." was too "click-baity".

Some pots just ask to be stirred.

1. You mention “charities” and “nonprofits” as if they are the same thing. They are not.

Charities, by definition, are institutions with a formal public-benefit purpose. Nonprofits are corporate entities that do not generate a profit, and can have any purpose, including the furtherance of very private, very special interests that may have nothing to do with the public good.

When you say the “charity model” doesn’t work anymore, it’s not clear whether you are referring to the nonprofit corporate structure or institutions founded to serve a public-benefit purpose. This is an increasingly important distinction to make, because ...

Without getting overly academic, there are economic reasons why charitable (volunteer-directed, public-interest) organizations have always existed. They are a vital part of a healthy civil society, identifying grassroots needs long before government can and serving markets that need to be served but offer no hope of financial return. There will always be gaps in what government prioritizes, what enterprise wants to provide, and what communities need. There is no functioning democratic economic model that eliminates charities.

3. Charities don’t get the respect they deserve, I will give you that.

If anything, there is a wealth of information out there that suggests professional, expert, for-profit boards have done far more damage to the public interest than volunteer-led boards precisely because of the financial and societal incentives that accompany such positions.

If we can’t cheerlead for our peers in the sector, then who will?

4. Charities aren’t going anywhere, either.

The reality is that how well I do my job has no bearing on how much money my organization has to pay me (unless i work in the fundraising department). It’s a fundamental truth of economics and explains why charitable organizations and for-profit entities can never fully become one. (See my earlier post on Virtuous Circles).

Share all the stories you’d like about Millennials and social change, but charitable institutions are unique, and they will always have a role to play.

5. The people who started charities in the olden-timey days were pretty smart, too.

Are you suggesting that feudalism, the global slave trade, leprosy and other nasties of the past were somehow "lesser" social challenges than the ones we face today? That the people who sought to tackle them were less interested in systemic change? That those people just didn’t know any better? Or that they didn't realize they could have been making more money all that time?

With all due respect, democracy, equal voting rights, the abolition of slavery and a host of other social justice victories are evidence that people worked hard to tend to those in need and fight the good fight at the same time. Those victories were not inevitable. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

6. Which doesn’t mean the sector has always done a good job.

For example, it sounds like the events you have attended are grim affairs. Of course organizers should look at ROI and a full cost/ benefit analysis for their activities. That’s a given.

I, for one, think that people will always want to come together with like minded individuals in a quasi-social setting. There is something magical about a group of people articulating a vision and asking for the public to support them.

7. Which brings me to the charity mindset: Pshaw, I say.

Gandhi wrote that charities should rely on donations from the public because it was the only way to ensure that the organization represented the true public will. That’s why he gave up his successful law practice and “begged” his community to support him - it was the harder path, but the truer one for his cause. In the process, he rallied an entire nation and left a mark that will resonate for generations.

That model is not right for every issue in every place, but surely it is needed some of the time.

I’m not so sure that the solution is to abandon charitable aims or notions entirely. Perhaps we should be elevating and celebrating the sector, instead of buying into a worldview that lack of economic success is a sign of failure.

So … I’m hoping that, by writing honestly, some other intrepid soul will read your blog and think about these issues. They’re important. Thank you for raising them.

The message of Day 1 at Dreamforce (the Salesforce technology conference attended by 150,000 fine folks) is that “everyone is an innovator."

But not really.

Everyone has the potential to innovate, sure. (You never know who is going to create radical change. Why not it be you?)

But you’re not a magical innovator of innovation just by sheer virtue of your unique individual awesomeness. To be an “innovator”, you actually have to innovate. That’s not always possible, and it’s not always desirable.

Picasso: Smarter than the dude behind me in the sandwich line.

I don’t care if what we’re doing is new. I don’t care if it’s different. I only care if it’s working.

Impact is the most important thing. Innovation should be its servant.

Some professional sectors - like mine - are sonew that there are no rules for how to do it well. There are no established old-school codes ripe for disruption. The field has been around for decades, not centuries. Which means each new program or project idea isn’t innovative. It’s not disruptive. It’s just “Tuesday”.

Every day we show up and try to do things that have never been done before. We should be so lucky to have programs that draw on repeatable skills, to have an opportunity to do one thing multiple times to hone our crafts.

Innovation is a luxury of the establishment. Our scrappy underdog goal is impact. Let’s talk about that.